Kosovo

So the world’s newest country was formed Sunday, but it’s still up in the air over whether it will remain that way.
Kosovo Article 1

Kosovo Article 2

Non-Article Reader Summary:
Kosovo, which used to be the southern part of Serbia, declared independence. Serbia called an emergency UN meeting. US, England, Germany, Taiwan, and a bunch of over countries are recognizing it. Russia, Serbia, Spain, China, and a few others aren’t. Servia pulled its diplomats out of countries recognizing it. Tension. Violence. Riots. Parades. Border Violence resulting in the destruction of NATO and UN property.

What are your views/thoughts/ideas?
I don’t know a whole lot about this issue, or even that there as an independence issue in Serbia/Kosovo, until yesterday morning. They are taking a large chunk of Serbian land and economy with them.

Difficult to say. I think that they should have a right for independence if they want it, but it’s a complicated issue. I’m not actually sure what Sweden’s stand on it is, but I assume we’re recognizing it. Or we’re neutral. Probably the latter, because we’re all terrified of having opinions that may piss somebody off.

Europe’s Kosovo policy is unspeakably vile. But more than that, at this point it doesn’t even benefit them. At this point, the European governments are so intent on humiliating Serbia (and Serbia’s allies in the UN) that they have voluntarily created a threat to their own national security.

Europeans complain about how Muslims are allegedly trying to take over their countries and expanding Islam into Europe. But then again, by assaulting Serbia and stealing Serbia’s historic heartland, those same Europeans destroyed an old, European, Christian society, and gave the land over to…a band of Islamic extremists who have used the NATO occupation as a cover for their ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population of Kosovo.

After NATO’s attack on Serbia in 1999, Kosovo became a legal black hole, unaccountable to anyone. It is now a haven for drug trafficking, organised crime, and Islamic extremism. (Some of the 9/11 hijackers had trained in the Muslim regions of the Balkans.) NATO and the EU are both unable and unwilling to control these activities. And it’s not like the KLA is going to be satisfied with just this. They also claim Macedonia, Montenegro, and parts of Greece as “Greater Albania,” and fully intend to annex more land in the future.

Not only that, but this opens up the door for any dissatisfied ethnicity anywhere to demand independence and refuse to compromise. This includes the Basques in Spain, Hungarians in Romania, Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo, Muslims in Russia, Russians in all of the former Soviet republics, the Scots in the UK, and so on. Some of these situations could result in new wars. The EU’s response is to bleat some bureaucratic nonsense about how the Kosovo situation is “unique” and thus only Kosovo Muslims deserve independence – while areas of Kosovo that still have a Serb majority do not have the right to stay with Serbia! No one will ever take this ridiculous argument seriously.

As with the war in Iraq, the Kosovo war was based on many lies. Clinton, Blair et al. viciously demonised the Serbs and blamed them for all the atrocities committed in the Balkans over the previous decade. They turned public opinion in favour of the war by fabricating a “genocide” that the Serbs supposedly committed. First they claimed that 100,000 or even 500,000 Albanians were killed in the “genocide” – then, as time passed, they revised that figure to 50,000, then 10,000, and then, after the war, they just stopped talking about numbers altogether. (The actual number of bodies recovered from Kosovo has been on the order of two thousand, of whom many were Serbs.) At the same time, NATO deliberately targeted Serbian civilian infrastructure, and used weapons containing depleted uranium against the Serbs.

In reality, the Balkans were embroiled in a <i>civil war</i>, in which all the sides were equally determined and ruthless, and committed equally many atrocities. But <i>after</i> the war – oh yes, then the ethnic cleansing began in earnest, except now the Serbs were its victims. As recently as 2004, Kosovo was swept by violence in which hundreds of Serbs were either killed or driven from their homes, to say nothing of the Serbian cultural artefacts (e.g. monasteries) that were destroyed in the process. The EU’s answer is to <i>deny them any legal recourse whatsoever</i>.

Unsurprisingly, despite all its well-funded bureaucratic and legal structures, the “international court” failed to convict Milosevic, despite having years to do. Milosevic capably discredited most of the prosecution’s claims and witnesses – so they tried to restrict his legal rights by forcing him to accept one of their own lawyers as legal counsel, and then when that didn’t work, they just postponed the trial and waited for him to die from his health problems. Milosevic may have committed many war crimes, but if he deserved to stand trial, then so did all of his opponents in the war, as well as all of his judges. The court was a travesty of justice, and quickly turned into a pointless, self-perpetuating bureaucratic machine.

Neither Europe nor America really cares about Kosovo. They just want to wrap it up quickly and hope that the problem goes away. That doesn’t happen in the Balkans. This kind of policy will lead to some very troubling times, and the EU will have no one to blame but itself.

As usually, good points. May I add that the EU was late even in support of Spain against Morocco a few years ago and looking at the staleness in Cyprus or Bosnia-Herzegovina and the sloow pace towards “an ever closer union”, I wouldn’t expect any meaningful initiatives or a plan for the adjacent areas apart from being bossed around by the US.

I’ve read that, at least for the time being, the Kosovans don’t really want to join Albania (anecdotally, an Albanian friend seems rather unimpressed with the whole shebang). I think SK didn’t mention it, but Montenegro also seceded a couple of years ago after political pressures. Anyway, another low for the U.N. And to think I used to wonder how people felt watching the League of Nations’ incapability after WW1.

I don’t like this. Mainly due to the precedent SK mentioned that this sets; Kurds in Iraq breaking away just because they’re dissatisfied or any ethnicity in a country deciding to seek autonomy because they want it. I’m not understanding how this would contribute to stability in the world stage. A new country does not equal stability in any shape or form, and I don’t see how it’s existence through such bitter terms is really going to solve anything. So, yeah, I agree with the person who disagrees with me on every point. There’s a grain of truth in everything.

However, the US did recognize it and that seems a bit odd - if this were to happen in Iraq there’s no way we would accept it. There’s always two sides to each story.

1 word: appeasement.

Dion (Read: Liberal Party leader in Canada) seemed to be in favor of recognising this.

Wonder if he’d be so eager if Quebec pulled off that very same maneuver…

Letting the genie out of the bottle – an overused cliché in this case – comes to mind immediately. The UN should prepare for dozens of potential new members, willing to jump on the “Independence” bandwagon.

Now, I don’t see many reasons for other countries or international organizations not to recognize South Ossetian Republic (or Dagestan, or Predniestrovie).

Dion already pulled out the “Kosovo is a special case” card. We’ll see how this plays out in the not too distant future. I’ll bet that “Vive le Quebec Libre!” speeches will be very popular this year.

Everybody thinks they/theirs is a special case.

Maybe it’s finally time for The South To Rise Again. With UN backing.

Really I can try to make jokes out of this but nothing is going to be as farcical as the truths SK is bringing here:

Europeans complain about how Muslims are allegedly trying to take over their countries and expanding Islam into Europe. But then again, by assaulting Serbia and stealing Serbia’s historic heartland, those same Europeans destroyed an old, European, Christian society, and gave the land over to…a band of Islamic extremists who have used the NATO occupation as a cover for their ethnic cleansing of the Serbian population of Kosovo.

and here

Some of these situations could result in new wars. The EU’s response is to bleat some bureaucratic nonsense about how the Kosovo situation is “unique” and thus only Kosovo Muslims deserve independence – while areas of Kosovo that still have a Serb majority do not have the right to stay with Serbia! No one will ever take this ridiculous argument seriously.

and here

They turned public opinion in favour of the war by fabricating a “genocide” that the Serbs supposedly committed. First they claimed that 100,000 or even 500,000 Albanians were killed in the “genocide” – then, as time passed, they revised that figure to 50,000, then 10,000, and then, after the war, they just stopped talking about numbers altogether. (The actual number of bodies recovered from Kosovo has been on the order of two thousand, of whom many were Serbs.) At the same time, NATO deliberately targeted Serbian civilian infrastructure, and used weapons containing depleted uranium against the Serbs.

And so on.

It’s hard out there for a [STRIKE]pimp[/STRIKE] satirist. When leaders are their own satire.